Political Quotes

“today, I am proud to introduce the Justice for All Reauthorization Act of 2016 with Senator Cornyn. The Justice for All Act, originally enacted in 2004, was an unprecedented bipartisan piece of criminal justice legislation. It has improved many aspects of our criminal justice system, and this reauthorization includes critical updates to ensure public confidence in the integrity of the American justice system. The bill builds on the work I began in 2000, when I introduced the Innocence Protection Act. That measure was designed to ensure that defendants receive competent representation in criminal cases and have access to post-conviction DNA testing in those cases where the system got it wrong. The Innocence Protection Act became a key component of the Justice for All Act, and is reauthorized in the bill we introduce today. We know our justice system is imperfect and that innocent people are sometimes convicted, and even sentenced to death. There were 149 people exonerated just last year, the highest number on record. They spent an average of 15 years in prison before their names were cleared. There have been 337 post-conviction DNA exonerations in the United States since 1989. Twenty of them were sentenced to death. The first person exonerated from a death row crime by DNA evidence was a man named Kirk Bloodsworth. Kirk was a young man just out of the Marines when he was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to death for a heinous crime that he did not commit.…”